


Waiting For A Hurricane

by Eternal_Love_Song



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Blackhawk - Freeform, Character Study, Clint Barton Feels, Clint Needs a Hug, Clintasha - Freeform, F/M, Introspection, POV Clint Barton
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-11
Updated: 2014-10-11
Packaged: 2018-02-20 19:35:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2440391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eternal_Love_Song/pseuds/Eternal_Love_Song
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dating a spy was like waiting for a hurricane when you had no weather forecast. You never knew when it would hit, how bad it would be, but you always knew that it was coming. Something powerful that couldn't be fought or resisted. A force that pushed and pulled you along and left chaos in it's wake.</p><p>It had been ten years since the incident that changed his life.</p><p>Clint Barton's life had not turned out how he'd thought it would.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waiting For A Hurricane

Clint Barton's life had not turned out how he'd though it would. For one, he was still alive and that had been the biggest surprise of all. He was also living the quiet life, for certain definitions of "quiet" that is.

It had been ten years since the incident that changed his life. Ten years since an alien thinking himself a god ripped everything out of him and stuffed it back wrong. Ten years since he'd quit Shield and distanced himself from the lives of superheroes and villains alike. Ten years of dating a spy and dangling on the edge of a life he chose to leave behind.

The majority of his life was normal. He'd long gotten over the feeling of uselessness whenever he saw super villains and monsters on the news and thought he should be doing something. He had learned to suppress the feeling of needing to grab his bow anything he witnessed a crime. He had learned how to be a civilian again.

Then there were the other days.

* * *

 

It was three in the morning when he heard the sound. It was as soft as the opening of a window could be, but the paranoia of knowing what could be out there, of having once been one of the things that crept in the night had kept his instincts sharp. He was a light sleeper, by some combination of fear and remembered training. He reached for the gun kept under his pillow and and slipped slowly and silently out of bed.

He crept around his bedroom door with his gun already pointing at the window, finding his red haired intruder stopping mid step. She looked better than the last time he had seen her, haggard and blatantly on the run and refusing to tell him why, but she had that same level of exhaustion about her. Running on too few hours of sleep with too much to do and not enough time to rest. The black suit made her blend in well the shadows, but his well trained eyes could still trace over the outline of her curves, familiar yet mysterious all at once. He breathed a sigh of relief as he lowered his weapon.

"You scared the hell out of me, Tasha."

Natasha smirked at him as she continued her path toward him. He could tell this was a social visit by the ease of her expression and lack of obvious wounds. She never came to him wounded with anything subtle. He'd had to move more than once because she sought him out for shelter and she didn't live to return to the same place twice if she thought she could have been followed. He didn't like to stay in the afterwards, either, for much the same reason. The only difference being that he no longer knew who was out there, just that they were.

"Good to see you, too." She kissed him soundly on the lips before moving past him.

"Bed or shower?" He asked as she passed.

"Shower first."

"You been casing my place? How do you know the shower's that way?" He asked her with a grin.

She tossed him a flirty look over her shoulder. "Maybe it's just a good guess?"

"Guess, my ass," He replied following her down the hall to the bathroom.

Clint didn't always tell her where he was moving, but she always found him. He loved Natasha, loved her to pieces with his whole heart. But as long as he was involved with her, he could never really be "out". He still got calls from Shield that he didn't answer, sometimes stared at the phone for hours as they persisted in trying to contact him, but they never showed up in person. In that way they respected his decision, but they still tossed temptation at him whenever possible. People still knew who he was, just as a different identity. He wasn't Hawkeye anymore. Now he was the remaining weakness to the Black Widow, the safe house they spent years searching for, the leverage.

Sometimes it was too much.

Sometimes love wasn't a good enough incentive to put up with this life.

So sometimes he didn't tell her when he moved or where he went. He'd feel sick and validated for a few weeks, knowing he'd done himself a favor, done the right thing to finally get away, felt like he'd sold out his best friend and was the worst possible person. But then she'd show up like nothing happened, like she'd always know where he was and what he was doing, and she probably did, but in those moment he just clung to her and felt so much relief he thought he'd die from it.

Dating a spy was like waiting for a hurricane when you had no weather forecast. You never knew when it would hit, how bad it would be, but you always knew that it was coming. Something powerful that couldn't be fought or resisted. A force that pushed and pulled you along and left chaos in it's wake.

Clint tried to enjoy it whenever he could. Tried not to feel guilty about the fact that he had been her partner on the field and now she was out there alone because he'd decided he had to get out.

He watched her peel out of her skintight suit and step under the spray of water. She kept the curtain open, either to let him watch or because she was expecting him to join her. He cataloged her body as his eyes traced over every inch of her skin, mapping any new scars or scrapes. She changed every time he saw her, even when she was around for weeks at a time. Scars on her psyche, on her body, on her heart, that grew and festered day to day, tensing or relaxing at signals he could no longer pin point in his own behavior.

Natasha had always been the one to get into the head of others, not Clint.

He removed his own clothes and got into the shower behind her so that he touch her. Her hair was longer, all the way down her back now. He wondered if she'd been on some under cover mission, posing as someone else, something else, had started messing with her head more and more. She came back to him sometimes unable to remember who she was suppose to be and wen her told her she was suppose to be herself, she sometimes looked like she didn't know who that was.

He slid his hands along her skin. There was bruising along her sides. He couldn't see it, but she grew very still when he touched her sensitive spots. An old scar along her stomach that was barely visible felt raised beneath his finger tips. Her shoulders were tense and she barely responded to his touch. He didn't like to think about what she had been doing on her recent mission to desensitize her to his touch.

Natasha turned around in his arms to catch his lips with her own. It felt like desperation, but not passion. She worked on hand into his hair as the other pulled him closer, nails raking up his skin. He responded to her readily, yielded to her. He had to take every bit of herself that she offered, because she left a piece of herself behind on every mission.

Eventually she would return to him with nothing left.

* * *

 

Natasha stay with him for a little over a week.

On the tenth day, he wakes to find her gone and note left on his pillow.

She got an urgent call and didn't know when she would be back.

Clint just sighed as he tried to make himself go back to sleep.

* * *

 

It was always easy to adjust to Natasha showing up out of the blue. It was like a dance that he never the forgot the steps to. They moved together so easily, physically and emotionally, even if mentally they were in increasingly different head-spaces.

It was her absences that he didn't know how to handle.

Even if it was only a day, he had a hard time adjusting to waking up in an empty bed afterwards. Loneliness never got any easier. She moved around his place silent as a shadow, but somehow he still misses the little sounds that told him he wasn't alone. The soft sound of her breathing, the gentle rustle of fabric as she walked around in something that actually let her skin breathe, the sound of her voice... Sometimes he'd leave the television on for a few days to feel like he wasn't the only one home.

It was a month later when she returned.

This time he didn't hear her when she entered. That was probably one of the things that scared him the most, when he didn't hear her. He didn't know if it meant that she was getting better or he was just getting worse. Maybe it was both, but he hated it either way.

She was naked when she slipped into the bed, pressing herself flush against his back. "Clint," She whispered. He was moving before he was even fully awake, turning to face her. She caught his lips in a slow and sensual kiss, her entire body trying to push as close to him as possible.

"Tasha," He breathed out between kisses, his hands ghosting over her skin. Down the center of her spine, down the back of her thighs, pulling her leg to rest over his hip, his other hand caressing her face. He never knew how much force he should use, where it was safe to touch her, when she came to him like this. It was too dark to try and cataloge injuries and she was too insistent. One of her hands slipped between them to pull down his boxers and she pushed him down, rolling them so that she was on top.

There wasn't even air between their bodies as she pulled as close to him as possible.

His cock was pressed against her, trapped between her thighs, and she squeezed her legs together to keep him that away. He could feel her wetness dripping onto him, her breaths turning to pants as she rubbed against him. Natasha barely broke away to breath. Her tongue moved around his mouth like she owned the place, her hands pushing hard into his skin, moving along his arms, grabbing onto his shoulders. She writhed against him for what felt like hours, refusing to let him move, not even to get closer.

"Tasha," He whimpered, trying to move his hips closer, wanting to be inside her, to feel her heat surrounding him.

Her mouth trailed hot wet kisses down his jaw and to his neck. The kisses turned to licking, the licking to sucking, starting soft and fast but quickly becoming long and hard. "Let me do this," She panted in reply.

He was helpless beneath her, thrusting his hips, moving his hard length between her thighs. He let out small gasp every time she pressed her thighs tighter around him, feeling her hips undulate as she ground against him. He moved his mouth to her neck, trailing a path to a spot behind her ear that was her weakness. She cried out softly, "Clint!"

He pulled her tighter to him as she began lining bites along is neck. "Shit! Tasha!"

"Yes," she breathed back, her own voice sounded just as lost. He closed his eyes as he spilled between her thighs. She ground against him faster, panting heavily. He swirled his tongue along her spot and she shuddered as her own orgasm ran through her.

They lay there panting for a long time before she began to move. "Close your eyes," She told him.

He did. He heard the sound of her leaving the room and a few moment letting he heard the shower. He knew she didn't want him to, but he got up to follow her anyway.

He wished he'd stayed in bed.

Her body was black and blue with bruising. He could make out the imprint of hands around her neck, there were marks around her wrist from restraints, and one side of her face was partially swollen as if she'd been hit.

He inched out of the room before she could notice him.

Slowly, he climbed back into bed, closing his eyes and trying not to imagine what had happened to gain her those scars. Trying not to remember the kind of missions she was often sent on, trying to pretend that he didn't know what could happen. Trying not to feel guilty that he hadn't been there to have her back.

When she finally slipped back into bed, she crawled into the circle of his arms and pressed herself as close to him as possible. He held her so tight he though he'd snap her in half.

He realized what she'd wanted. He was safe. Had always been safe. Even when they were enemies he'd given her a home instead of a bullet like had been his mission. She needed him to be closer than those that had been able to hurt her. She need to feel good. Natasha only felt good when she had power, control.

He wanted to comfort her, but if she didn't want to acknowledge it right now, he would respect that. He didn't know what he could tell her that wouldn't be a lie, anyway. He couldn't protect her. It wouldn't be okay. And she wasn't safe.

People like them could never truly be safe.

* * *

 

Natasha's bruises had barely faded when she was sent on her next mission.

It was three days later when she returned this time.

Clint woke with a start when he heard the thunk from his living room. His gun was in hand immediately as he moved toward the living room, but he froze in the doorway. Natasha was leaning against the wall under the window, hand pressed to her side where a red stain was growing.

"Shit, Shit. Shit." Clint swore as he rushed toward her. He dropped down to her side, releasing the gun as he reached for her. "Nat!"

She was panting heavily and her eyes were clouded. "Clint..."

He moved her to lay flat on the ground so that there was less pressure on the wound. He was up and rushing to is bedroom, pulling the emergency kit from under his bed and returning to her side. He didn't waste time trying to peel her out of her suit, opting to just cut he material away from her wound instead.

"Nat. Nat, you gotta tell me what happened," Clint urged. He needed to know if they had enough time to properly treat the wound or if he needed to patch it up as fast as possible.

"We're safe," She told him.

That was a lie, but it was the kind of lie that meant they had time.

They needed time.

It took him longer than he wanted to patch her up. He had to remove the bullet, hoping that there weren't any stray fragments left inside her, stitch the wound, clean it, and bandage it. She was silent as he worked, only letting out the occasional harsh breath.

She looked too out of it to move.

His assessment must have been wrong, though, because when he left to put away the emergency kit and wash the blood off of his hands, he returned to find her gone.

He decided to move the next day and the house was empty within the week.

Three months later she came back, walking through the front door like she owned the place.

* * *

 

Clint had nightmares.

In the past, they were nightmares about the invasion. He dreamed of aliens emerging from portals, of old enemies finding him no matter where he went, of Shield dragging him back into the life he was always trying to escape.

Now all of his nightmares were about her.

He dreamed that she would leave one day and never come back. That she would suffer something that she couldn't handle and he couldn't heal. That she would return with orders to kill him and actually go through with it.

Sometimes his nightmares came true.

Every time she came back something inside her was a little more broken. She had trouble taking her off the mask and he had to watch as it took longer and longer for the persona to crack, for the blank face she wore to ease back into an actual expression. She was becoming numb and he couldn't stop it.

* * *

 

It was midnight when he felt the dip in the bed that woke him. Natasha preferred to come home at night, when she thought it was less likely she'd be seen. He turned to face her, finding her watching him with a blank expression. She was still dressed as she perched on the edge of the bed and for once she didn't look injured.

"Hey," He said sleepily, reaching out to her.

"Hey," She replied.

He sat up, but she was still just watching him. She looked exhausted, but he thought it was mostly mental fatigue.

"Come here," He rasped. "Let's get you out of this." She watched him as he began to peel her out of her catsuit, carefully tugging down the fabric in case there were injuries he couldn't see. She was unusually pliant in his hands.

"Clint," She whispered. She leaned toward him when he looked at her, moving her newly naked body toward him. She swung her legs over to straddle him, pressing her forehead to his collar bone.

"Hey," He whispered, running his hands soothingly down her back and pressing a kiss to her temple. "What's wrong?"

"I'm tired, Clint," She told him, her body sagging against his. "This used to make me feel alive, now I don't anything."

Clint her her face in his hands, forcing her to meet his eyes. "You are alive," He told her firmly.

She looked at him sadly, but rather than reply, she leaned toward his lips. The kiss was slow, but not lacking in passion. He could feel the heaviness in her bones as she held herself up with his body. He moved his hands up her thighs, along her sides, up to her breast, cupping them in his hands and massaging them softly.

She let out a soft gasp and pressed herself further into his hands, her hips moving against his own. "Clint," She whimpered as his fingers trailed over her nipples. Her hands were on his shoulder, finger digging into his skin and she clung to him. "I need you. Now."

She raised her hips, moving herself along his length. He positioned himself and she slid down onto him, moving closer to envelope his lips with her own. She let out a soft groan when she pulled away and he watched as she came alive in his hands. She was mesmerizing as she rose and fell onto him, head tipped back, eyes closed, mouth open as she panted. His hands were moving all over her.

"Closer," She gasped and he wound his arms around her until there was no space between them left. He trailed his lips along her neck, leaving licks and bites and kisses, softly moving from one side to the other. She was absolutely beautiful this way and he kissed her until she felt it.

A small cry escaped her as she found release and he followed right after. They didn't separate for along time, though, her arms tightly clinging to him.

"I can't do this anymore," She whispered. "I can't keep going from off to on. It's too much."

"So don't," He told her. "You can stop. I know you can."

She held him tighter as she whispered desperately. "I can't. I can't choose."

"But you can." He stroked her hair softly and added, "I think you have to."

* * *

 

Clint felt like a storm chaser or an adrenaline junkie. People weren't suppose to wait for hurricanes, weren't suppose to chase after them.

It was dangerous and unhealthy and he couldn't stop any more easily than Natasha could.

The difference was that he also never made up his mind.

He wanted to get out, but he also desperately wanted to get back in. He wanted to know what Natasha was doing, wanted to be clued in to that part of her life. It was like an addiction and Natasha was his drug, just potent enough to keep him from getting clean. Just strong enough to keep him hooked.

He wasn't certain that he ever wanted to truly quit when the rush of the hurricane felt as good as being with her did.

* * *

 

It was a few months later, after having been home for two weeks that Natasha told him. "I think you were right, Clint. That I have to choose."

"Do you think you can?" He asked her.

She looked away from him a moment, took a deep breath. "I think that I can. I've been thinking about it a lot. It's killing me having to turn everything off out there and having to turn it back on in here. It gets harder to do each one the longer I do the other when it used to be second nature."

Clint took her hand, intertwining their fingers. "It'll be alright, Tasha. You're strong. If you want to stop, I think you'll be able to."

She closed her eyes and leaned her head against his shoulder. "This will be the last time," She told him.

He pulled her closer, pressing a kiss into her hair. "It'll be okay. You'll see."

* * *

 

It's been six months.

Clint doesn't stop waiting.

He wonders if it wasn't only him that was chasing a hurricane.

He wonders if the storm tore her apart.

He wonders if he'll ever find out.


End file.
